The Effects of Web Site Structure on Attitude: Moderating Effect of Surfing Behavior

One of main challenges advertisers face with the Internet is to create their Web sites so as to make visitors want to spend more time there, and to interact with the website and eventually elicit transactions. The assumption is that the more time consumers spend on the Web site, the more advantages, such as remembering the site’s contents (and eventually, company and product information), the company has. Because of this, companies are now trying to put more information and features on their Web site since advertisers assume that many features on the site can give visitors more options while they are surfing [1]. Many consumer research studies, however, have shown the negative effects of greater amounts of information on consumers' decision making [2]. These studies have confirmed that presenting superfluous non-product-related information or a lot of information that consumers cannot handle (process) might impede consumers' ability to make good decisions. However, those studies were based on tests in the context of traditional media. The new media, such as the Internet, have totally different characteristics from those of traditional media. That is, the Internet allows consumers to control their information flow, and it is much easier for consumers to decide what information they want to be exposed to [1].